Magpie Murders

I adored this book and almost everything about it, it definitely reminded me of the Agatha Christie books I have read way back in the day and it was nice to remember those times. For starters, I loved that the book had a mystery within a mystery, I have not encountered that too many times before. The main character, Susan works for a publishing company and she is given a manuscript of the latest book written by the company's most famous writer and as she dives into the book, she realizes that there is a real world mystery that needs to be solved involving the author's death. It's a really fascinating plot and the execution was almost perfect in my opinion.

The reason I didn't give the book five stars was because I got so into the mystery in the manuscript of the novel, that I found it hard to abandon that initial storyline and switch over to the real life mystery, where Susan is the detective and the suspects are all different, as is the nature of the mystery itself. I was a bit frustrated because I had to know who the killer was in the novel and then I would have been a lot more calmer going into the mystery switch. The ending was definitely worth it in hindsight but at the time I was reading it, I found it difficult to go on at times because I wanted the solution to the first one.

The pace of the novel was pretty good, even with my frustration although there were a few instances when I wanted the story to move along a bit faster since I was dying to know the end of the manuscript that the book began with. Other than that I got no complaints. It was a genius story, I'm just a rather impatient person.

Moving on, the characters I grew very close to and fond of. I found a very relatable human aspect to almost all of them and grew to know them very well. Everything was explained in the end and I was grateful for being able to conclude everything with certainty and was not left to ponder much of anything. Most of the books I have read before have not given me this satisfaction and I loved every second of finding out why every individual acted the way that they did. Now I will not lose sleep over racking my brain as to who did it.

In addition, the style of the writing was simple yet refined. It helped the plot flow smoothly, yet there was an intelligence to it that is hard to pinpoint but is evident in the layout of the novel. There were no instances in which I found myself having to reread parts because something didn't make sense or I wasn't fully aware as to what was going on. I will definitely look into Horowitz's other works.

In conclusion, I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a good who-done-it but with a twist that you don't initially see coming. It will grab your attention and you won't be able to stop because you will be invested in the story and it's intricate characters and you will have an undying need to find out who the perpetrator is of both mysteries!